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I no longer know what is behind this wall, I no longer know that there is a wall, I no longer know that this wall is a wall. I no longer know that there are walls in my apartment and that if there were no walls, there would be no apartment.
Georges Perec
You are sitting in your living room, in this room that is so familiar to you, where the family watches television together after dinner. Suddenly there is a deafening noise, the wall of your living room is gone, the room fills with dust and rubble, and where the wall used to be, soldiers rush into the room, shouting orders. You don’t know if they are after you, if they want to take over your house, or if it just happens to be on their way to somewhere else. Their faces are painted black, submachine guns are pointed at everyone, antennas sticking out of their backpacks. They look like giant alien bugs that have made their way through your living room wall.
In the early 2000s, the Israeli army IDF developed the warfare tactic of “walking through walls” for urban spaces in occupied Palestinian territories, which has since been used and continuously developed by private and state militaries worldwide.
For UNWALLING THE WALL, toxic dreams builds the house/apartment as a classic realistic, “true-to-life” theatrical element. Then toxic dreams gets to work and dismantles the house, destroys the walls, the stage set, live, every evening, in every performance. Based on the process of destruction, the group undertakes a forensic investigation of the theory, practice and army doctrine of “going through walls”, using all available means – video, audio, special effects, texts, interviews, re-enactments of documentary material and fictionalized scenarios.
toxic dreams was founded in 1997 by Kornelia Kilga (producer) and Yosi Wanunu (director and author). Since then, the group has realized more than 80 of its own productions. toxic dreams develops aesthetically and formally highly varied formats in collaborative processes within the framework of multi-year work cycles. The current Rashomon cycle is dedicated to the complex and contradictory process of finding the truth on the basis of case presentations.
